The Booth Lusteg Award - Part 2

It's been almost three long years since we named new winners for the Booth Lusteg Award, commemorating the New York Jets with the funniest-sounding names in franchise history. Here we don't mean to be cruel so much as we do obvious. Many of the people mentioned have already been told that they have a funny sounding name at some point in their lives, probably with the rhetorical question, "Hey, anybody ever tell you you got a funny name?" But if we don't acknowledge the names as funny, then we're not doing our job, and by "our," I mean "my," and by "job," I mean "put off work in my real life that needs to get done."

We had to continue this installment because the first Booth Lusteg Award has been the most clicked entry on our site and, not coincidentally, the most spam-inundated entry at our blog. What is it? An egghead might be able to explain why Russian investors want to sell me property near Chernobyl or why Manhattan escorts are available for me right now - all just because I'm intrigued by names like Don Odegard - but no one's bothered to elaborate. God only knows.

If you have followed us before, there are essential rules to this process. I will merely cut and paste them from the previous awards because it's easier for me to do so than rewrite them or remember them from three years ago:

"You have to take several factors into account while deciding whether a name is funny or not, and even then, it can appear arbitrary. Certain tasteful restrictions do apply, though. A name should not be considered funny because it sounds, as Mario Cuomo used to say, "ethnic..." So you shouldn't say a name is "funny" just because it sounds different to a largely Western, Judeo-Christian ear; I suppose I will be violating that rule.


I also said in the last round: 


"Brett Favre" doesn't sound funny, does it? Ah, but it should. It did once. Admit it. Even if it were pronounced correctly, it would still seem funny. Or French."

The name "Brett Favre" at the period at which I originally wrote in 2008 signified a potentially funny name whose humor was negated by its proliferation throughout American culture, making it automatically not funny in and of itself. But now of course Brett Favre falls under the category of the Browning Nagle Eligibility because his name automatically conjures feelings of shame, defeat and self-recrimination among Jets fans, whereas for a brief period of time, it signified team salvation. No doubt the Vikings have a similar consideration. Now it sounds funny when you say it, and by "funny," I don't mean Ha-ha funny, but rather, Hmmm, how ironic funny. Which is never really all that funny at all.

Anyway, here we are, let's bring them on, from #50 to roughly #25:


#50 - Vernon Gholsten
#49 - George Hoey
#45 - Corky Tharp
#44 - Bert Rechicar
#43 - Jazz Jackson
#42 - Ronnie Lott
#39 - Jehuu Caulcrick
#37 - Skip Lane
#35 - Billy Joe
#33 - Curley Johnson*
#32 - Emerson Boozer*
#31 - Jeremy LaSeur
#30 - Nuu Faaola
#29 - Bill Shockley (honorary)
#26 - Dewey Bohling
#25 - Reggie Tongue
#22 - Danny Woodhead


Two are Browning Nagle choices, one seems like a misprint, one a draft choice gone awry, the rest just sound funny to my ear. *The asterisk signifies an abrupt change in the rules that originally placed Super Bowl III veterans in the exclusionary zone for consideration, much the way, at one time, a gentleman's agreement among city planners in Philadelphia forbid a single building to be constructed higher than the statue of Billy Penn atop City Hall. Things change, though. Sometimes you have to go past simple decorum and demand something better.

First, we're going to violate the ethnic clause. Some names are born tongue-twisters, and that makes them funny. Jehuu Caulcrick #39 has a name that voice and diction teachers dream of. Vowels, consonants intertwined in a romance born of the English language and its attachment to Hebrew. It's a triumph for the tongue. (Number 25's last name is Tongue). "Jehuu" means "Yahweh is he," which doesn't mean that his family in Liberia believed their son was God, but Jets fans were at least hoping that the former Spartan would be a monster in the backfield with Shonn Greene. Current whereabouts are in Buffalo. Is the name funny? Not inherently, but get a person you're flirting with to say it unrehearsed, and you might get a laugh. Running back Nuu Faaola #30 was always reliable for a gain of five yards on a play in the mid-80's, and fans rewarded it with a cry of "Nuu!" from the stands of Giants Stadium. We would like to do the same. His name is a triumph for the tongue-less vowel, with more syllables than "Jehuu Caulcrick."

Emerson Boozer #32 has a great name. He knows it. We know it. I'm not going to deny it, nor belabor the point. I love the man. He played with painful corns and bunions all of his career, or so the Random House Books on Pro Football I read as a kid always told me. I know people who have bought his jersey just to have his last name on the back. Adam Sandler wears it in Big Daddy. But his first name is Emerson, like the man who once wrote, "To be great is to be misunderstood," so if we misunderstand Emerson Boozer, it means he is great. And he is. Curley Johnson #33 wins the award for the same reason Dick Wood #19 did last round.  Moving right along.

Ronnie Lott #42 wins because you look at his name and say, "Ronnie Lott? The Jets? Really?" the same way you say "Tony Dorsett? The Broncos? Really?"

George Hoey #49 played about seven games for us in 1976, but he has a great name, and so does number 35 Billy Joe because the man's last name actually is "Joe." Jeremy LaSeur #31 sounds like a character James Bond is assigned to tail.

Both Danny Woodhead (#22, 35) and Vernon Gholsten #50 fall under the Browning Nagle Eligibility, though for different reasons, obviously. Gholsten is a draft washout, so his name is grimly funny, with a familiarity Jets fans know from our history with the draft. As it happens, I actually thought his name sounded funny when we drafted him, and now we all know it's funny because it reminds us of our misplaced hopes. If he had played well, we'd all wear "Gholsten" on our backs and think nothing of it. Life just works that way.

"Woodhead" was originally funny to anyone outside a select area of Nebraska, where the man's name conjured a monolithic sense of greatness. I really believed in Danny Woodhead, and I have the evidence to prove it. Originally a Jets' walk-on, he now elicits a kind of whimpered guffaw that a fan usually utters in the presence of his team's failures. To laugh best is to ultimately laugh at oneself, and when Danny Woodhead gained an overall 115 yards against the Jets in last year's 45-3 thrashing at the hands of the Patriots, we laughed bitterly, tearfully, and shamefully at ourselves.

Number 43 Jazz Jackson sounds like a guy Popeye Doyle needs to shakedown on the gritty, grimy streets of heroin-riddled New York, whereas Skip Lane #37 and Corky Tharp #45 of the Titans sound like two of Chip's friends on My Three Sons.

Bert Rechicar #44, who played briefly for the Titans, once held the record for the longest placekick for years until Tom Dempsey broke it in 1970. We celebrate the name "Rechicar" because it sounds great no matter how you pronounce the ch in the middle of his surname. Another Titan Bill Shockley #29 gets honorable mention for his poignant story and proximity to our award's namesake. Simply put, after years of being out of the game, the Steelers tried him out in 1968 as a kicker, only to cut him soon after in favor of Booth Lusteg himself, our founder, our redeemer, our guide.

Dewey Bohling? We do. But only when no one is watching.